What is mind? Doesn't matter. What is matter? Never mind.

But.. those are the bright souls of the trillions dying in that galaxy as they escape into heaven!

MSNBC quality control strikes misses again!

I see the mistake is STILL not fixed. I guess Alan Boyle figures since the end of the world is coming, there's no need to correct typos.

Well, it's fixed now. Really, maybe it was just an oversight. No need to get so angry about it. I get that many writers on MSNBC seem to go horrifically unedited, and many seem to have no writing skills to speak of, but Alan isn't one of them. Even excellent writers need editing, and these days most writers don't have that luxury, along with tight deadlines and busy schedules. I write for a newspaper doing special supplements, and we get no copyediting. I'm pretty solid with my final products, but sometimes even I goof.

I used to work at MSNBC and I count Alan Boyle as one of the few that I have some respect for. He was there at the beginning with a handful of other reporters currently on staff (he made a great Dilbert on Halloween), but the consistent level of typos, misspellings and various other mistakes (on a daily basis) goes way beyond what should be expected from a professional news organization. I know all about deadlines, and the occasional goof is expected to get by, but the continuous flow of embarrassing errors coming from this site is....well....just embarrassing!

Well... I cannot argue with that! The glitches are legion. The AP isn't any better, constantly violating its own rules of AP Style. My favorite: These kids who think "25-years-old" should be hyphenated, confusing it with, for instance, "a 25-year-old man." It's so basic and elementary, but they just don't get it... and it makes it online all the time. What happened to having copy editors, anyway? Sheesh.

for those interested this is a link I stumbled upon while trying to find the 130 missing star systems page by RECONS...yea, I forgot proxima (Alpha Centauri) and Centaurus A have nothing in common, other than being in the S. hemisphere way outta my view........ http://www.chara.gsu.edu/RECONS/TOP100.posted.htm

I think you're confusing what "in Centaurus" means. The galaxy is in the constellation Centaurus, but not really IN it. If you look at that galaxy in the sky, you'll find it APPARENTLY within Centaurus. Don't confuse that with the star Alpha Centauri A (and Alpha Centauri B; it's a binary system, and Proxima Centauri, a third star, is likely gravitationally bound to that, so some argue it's a trinary system) which is PART of the constellation Centaurus. The trinary star system is very close, about 4.25-ish light years away. The galaxy in Centaurus, NGC 5128, is also called Centaurus A... but it is 10 to 16 MILLION light years away.

Alan, correct me if I've mucked anything up here.

Constellations are not 'places' but merely 'directions' in the sky. It's like saying your neighbor's house is in the 'north'. Even though your neighbors house is close, just across the street, that doesn't mean everything in the 'north' is across the street. There are things very far away in the 'north' too. Likewise, 'in Centaurus' just refers to those objects in the same general direction as the stars that make up what appears to be the outline of a centaur in the sky from here. Some are close, some are very, very far.

thank fitzpatrick and sciguy, of course I knew that, hope you all find the link helpful....I spared depriving you all the pleasure of googling for yourselves, the wikipedia pages are great but for anyone following up on research make sure to surf the external links as well...now on with the real comment, I am hoping nasa, grad students, and a long list of private, commercial and taxpayer funded astro-surveys as well as my fellow telescope gazers will focus a LOT more man-hours on the near neighbor-hood. I am as excited as anyone when hubble sees further something further out, and I am positive that studying dark holes, dark matter, dark energy and all else in totality and examining the self evident differentials (with and without the calculus) will expand our understanding of everthing, including ourselves, BUT...I think we are enamored with the forest and should take a closer look at the trees right in front of us...as pointed out in another post, where the cute black hole is in our viewfinder is far from where it actually is at this point in time...where as, not so with, as David points out, the very close trinary system!!.....the direction of our soon to be launched "imperial probe droids" will be very much determined by what small data we can garner over the next few decades...I AM CERTAIN that amatures will play a pivotal role in THAT data collection!!..why? because, my dear watsons, the easy pickens are easier to get funding for...not to say that the work in the article was "easy", and we all love pics and data analysis of black holes and their cosmic ejecta. So, In summary, I implore those with such interest to look hard and long in our near neighborhood...if there are signs of intelligence, it will be an order of magnitude more probable to detect, if there are dark stars, they will be hard to find but of major significance, also note the stars that have been close to us in the last 500 million years, if there is to be some possibility of transpermia, those stars have a higer degree of probability than say, a far flung galaxy....not to say one is more favored than the other, more like a common sense approach to the theory....and finally, quo vadis?...if not the trinary system or benards star of wolfs star then where?...like the moon, we shall reach for the closest star, unless something peculiar calls us in a different direction....which is why I jumped back here after loading the comment....

The material in the jets does not come from inside the event horizon, which would indeed be a contradiction. Scientists don't know exactly how the jets work, but one theory is that the distortion of the space and time around the hole as it rotates twists magnetic field lines at the poles in such a way that it accelerates in-falling material in the area and shoots it out along those magnetic field lines at high speed before it can enter the event horizon.

sci guy...what about the bubble off cygnus 1X - the data was described as a 'cavity of whatever eminating from 1X at a 'very fast speed' - and what about 'Hawkins Radiation' (these are real questions)? thanks

Did Al Gore take this photo? If so then this is just another liberal hoax to get us to believe the universe is heating up due to intergallactic man-made radiation. Just another ploy to keep us from drilling into black holes to supply our country's energy needs. I'm not fooled for one second.

..and your brain